This is Dr. Les Barbanell's second book about what he has come
to term the "Caretaker Personality Disorder." His first book
about the topic, Removing the Mask of Kindness: Diagnosis and Treatment
of the Caretaker Personality Disorder, was published in 2006.

In Breaking the Addiction to Please, Barbanell does a fine job
explaining his theory that taking care of someone else can take on
addictive dimensions that necessitate a thorough recovery process
similar to recovering from other forms of addictions. He locates the
roots of unhealthy needs to please others in traumatic childhood
experiences related to emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that
resulted in real or perceived abandonment, which in turn is
unconsciously addressed by overcompensating to such a degree that the
"please addict" will sacrifice his/ her own needs in order to
avoid a repeat of the original trauma. According to Barbanell, however,
the effect of over-pleasing others frequently turns out to be a rerun of
the traumatic experience: Because of a lack of mutuality that includes a
healthy balance of giving and receiving, please addicts are often taken
for granted and taken advantage of, and so remain largely invisible for
who they really are or want to be until they have exhausted their
emotional reservoirs.

While Barbanell appears to draw from a wealth of professional
experience, includes numerous examples from his practice, touches on
doubtlessly important areas related to the addiction to please, and
offers a "Selfless Personality Scale" that could prove
valuable in a clinical setting, anyone expecting a more scholarly
approach to the topic will be disappointed. With a list of only seven
references that include his own book (mentioned above) along with five
others published between 1957 and 1986, Breaking the Addiction to Please
appears to be an invitation to discuss the possibility of the caretaker
personality disorder rather than a substantiated account of how this
disorder differs from or overlaps with others already included in the
DSM-IV-TR. In Chapter 5, for instance, Barbanell offers a brief
comparison with the narcissistic personality disorder. However, as his
discussion of trauma and the self, his account of the narcissist in
relation to the caretaker remains in the very first stages of
acknowledging the complexity of the topic. Along the same line,
Barbanell appears to place great emphasis on the role of the unconscious
as the major source of both emotional survival of abuse as well as an
initial hindrance to recovery, yet his discussion of it remains
oversimplified.

Barbaneli has offered a new diagnostic category for the spectrum of
personality disorders that appears worth considering. However, before it
could be considered for inclusion in the DSM and thus also as an
insurance category, it will need to be supplemented by thorough research
to justify its diagnostic difference from already existing personality
disorders.